marketing

If you’re like me, you’ve been watching a ton of post-season baseball. Maybe not a ton, but certainly enough to have all of the lines from the Frank TV commercials memorized. Along with the humorous Frank Caliendo commercials, there are also the very annoying Dane Cook “There’s only one October” commercials. I don’t really think the Dane Cook spots ever really stood a chance of being enjoyable, but the most damage was perhaps done by TBS. One of the Caliendo spots takes a direct stab at the line “There’s only one October.” Now every time I see the Dane Cook spots I think to myself “that really is a stupid slogan.” Somehow TBS decided it was ok to use one commercial to belittle another, and then re-run the belittled ad thousands of times. The message gets mixed and the viewer gets annoyed. You cannot mix messages this way if you want your audience to attach meaning to the message or to buy into what you are trying to communicate. To me, this was a horrible marketing mistake, but also a good lesson.

Thoughts?

If this isn’t your mentality, it should be. To me there is nothing more exciting in business than a product launch. You’ve poured hours / weeks / months into something and you’re finally ready to unleash it to the world. It’s exciting, and if you’re like me you try to get as many people talking about it as possible on that first day. When I’ve launched web projects of mine, I’ve done it with thousands more visiting my site than the usual daily attendance. The day motask launched I had my first 1400 uniques in an hour - that doesn’t really happen with motask anymore. The problem is carrying that excitement over. But it shouldn’t be. For as many people as there are that have used any of my sites or your sites / products, there are millions more that haven’t. That’s why you need to launch your site / product everyday. Pack as much excitement as you would into introducing it to the world as you do introducing it to an individual. Your product can be brand new to someone or a group of people everyday, find these people and get them excited… and do it everyday.

I’m a great person to start with… tell me about your product and I’ll blog it.

My first 5 words post drifted into SEM discussion, that was probably misplaced. Not because I don’t agree with it, but because I don’t want you to miss the larger point. Perhaps that post is a good example of what not to do. The point is, get to the point, don’t waste my time, stay focused. If you’re not communicating one clear concise message, you’re losing potential users/customers/people.

I consider myself reasonably well connected to information. Yet lately I’ve somehow missed out on a few things I would like to have known about. They happen to be album releases. First was Beck’s: The Information, and now Clap You Hands Say Yeah’s: Some Loud Thunder. I use pandora all the time, and while I haven’t listened to my Beck station in a while, I’ve given enough thumbs up to both Beck and CYHSY that Pandora knows I am a fan. So, why not somehow tell me they have new albums coming out? I’d prefer RSS, but I’ll even let you email me that info with links containing your affiliate codes. Go ahead.. do it, I dare you, and then maybe we won’t have this conversation anymore. [and if you already do this and i just don't know about it, I apologize... but I should know about it.]

But it’s not just music, this idea should apply to all sorts of products. People want to know when new stuff comes out. Especially stuff they’ve told you countless times that they like. The choice is simple, it doesn’t take much to set up this type of feed and I’m fairly certain you’ll be happy with the return (which will also be easy to measure).

Imagine you could only say 5 words about your product. What would they be?

Guess what, online you may have less. If someone doesn’t “get” your product at first glance, they’re on to the next site.

Why can’t the world understand this? This is another one of the problems of SEO. SEMs want to write pages full of text to pack in the keywords. Too much text leads to people leaving your site. SEMs who you hired to market your site are getting people to your site, but also making them leave. Which is really more important, getting them there or keeping them? I think we all know.

I finally got around to reading Jason C’s post on SEO / SMO as crap, and largely I agree. This may seem strange as I 1) strongly focus on SEO for my sites and 2) have been hired by a handful of sites to do SEO. That said, Jason is primarily right; for every 20 seo sites I see at least 19 are doing something wrong. A while ago I posted about this.

Now we have people arguing for social media optimization, and telling you how hard it is and how you need them. This is the essential problem with SEO/SMO it’s not that hard. SEO will only last as long as there is a learning curve. This leads SEOs try to make things sound complex and tell you how much of a difference they’re going to make, but that’s all bound to change. As the next generation of marketers begin learning this stuff as just one of the handful of tricks that they have, the SEO specific firm will begin to disappear.

So enjoy the SEO business while it lasts, because it won’t be around forever, at least not as it currently exists. Sure, there are other areas of marketing that companies could do but choose to outsource - such as advertising - but the difference with SEO is that it is so easy that it cannot possibly last forever. I’m sure a number of companies will still choose to outsource SEO - they do outsource other easy things - but the pie will certainly begin to shrink, and the bad SEOs will find themselves where they belong: unemployed.

Nothing upsets me more than search engine optimization sites with poorly optimized sites. Today I read a blurb about a recently relaunched search firm’s site, so I clicked through and was disgusted. These people want to optimize your site for search, yet they don’t do basic things like using alt text for images. They want to design your site yet their code has 160 warnings, and they use tables with thick borders. They have a blog that doesn’t have an RSS feed. Worst of all they’re from Akron. Sites like this, more than anything, drive me crazy. Why can’t they all be like SEOmoz? I’ll save the site the embarrassment, but if you want to know the name of it, it’s pretty east to contact me.

On a related note I’m thinking of concentrating my own Search / Web consulting into a more focused effort. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, today’s site viewing just increases my desire to do it. It will be called amehigher - a play on my last name.

Despite the fact that I have a site that always gets listed in the ecommerce category, I don’t really have much experience with selling physical goods online. I have however, talked and worked with some people that have. This sets me up as something less than an expert, but I can tell you the 5 core things I would do if I were to create an ecommerce site:

1. Build a great looking site. Nothing is less trustworthy to me than a bad looking site. And, make it stupidly simple to be able to buy products.
2. Distribute content with RSS. All new products you add to your site should go into an RSS feed so your customers know when something new comes out. Not to mention the fact that distributed content gives you more opportunities to gain visitors from more sources. This can be done either by creating an rss feed yourself or starting a blog - which costs next to nothing, or nothing.
3. Use SEO. Every page for every product should be unique, every page should use titles and descriptions, every page should use descriptive links… and on and on. It all starts with a search, if you want to succeed that search better end at your site.
4. Use Edgeio. Sure, it doesn’t have the biggest following, but if you’re pushing your products in RSS, there’s no reason not to add the simple “listing” tag and have your products show up in one more place.
5. Establish Community. If you have a product that has a following, give back to your followers. Let the community be visible in you site. Perhaps even let them dictate what goes on the homepage of your site.
Bonus - Don’t forget about ebay, people go there to buy, you should be there selling.

The bottom line: It’s about distribution, and taking advantage of the channels available on the web.

And I’m sure there are many other things, which you should feel free to leave in the comments.

Guy Kawasaki recently did a write an interview with Michael Arrington in which he asked him how exactly you get on TechCrunch. The answer was essentially ‘be great or be google’ but I believe that there are plenty of great new start-ups not on TC as well as a bunch of average start-ups on TC. The thing to remember is that just because you didn’t make it doesn’t mean it’s over. There are a bunch of bloggers out there like me who would love to write about your start-up. And if enough of us write about you, eventually everyone else will start to notice.

Blogging, like most businesses, can be thought of in terms of ‘earn’ and ‘turn’ - In this case TechCrunch is the earn, you get a bunch of visits form one spot. But if that doesn’t work there’s still the turn, getting the same number of visits but in smaller batches from lesser known bloggers.

So if you have a start-up, or know of one that’s not getting enough attention, let me know.

Instead of the regular marketing thursday, I’m going to have a guest post up momentarily. What does this have to do with marketing? It’s simple - for me: I expand the number of contributors which will hopefully expand the reach of the blog to some people in the new contributors blog. For the poster: he’ll get the benefit of reaching my network, which may attract new customers/users/readers.

I asked the first guest poster to contribute and I’m glad he did, he was a commenter on my blog and I really respected his opinions. He is, however, insane as he believes the Suns will win the NBA championship.

If you’d like to do a guest post just email me - jda at jdamer.com.

Two articles I’ve seen today and one website have one thing in common - they misuse the word viral. Calling something viral before it happens is just wrong.

The examples I’ve seen today (sarcasm in italics):

1. website says ‘just posted viral videos’ - hmmm…. just posted and viral? that’s amazing.
2. blogger says ‘it’s a good idea to put your videos on youtube for some viral marketing’ - oh, as soon as they’re on youtube they’re viral? Awesome.
3. newspaper says ‘local businesses are using MySpace for viral marketing’ - Wow, I’m on MySpace, I must be viral too. That must be why everyone is talking about the daily j.d.a.

Things aren’t viral because they’re on YouTube or Digg or because your business is on MySpace - at some point someone looked at how these services spread and how they let some things spread and said ‘that’s what viral marketing is.’ But it’s not. Viral marketing refers to the ways in which ideas spread - no service can guarantee viral marketing. You can use these things (and others including real life human interaction) to increase the chance that your idea will become viral, but things aren’t viral from the start - they have to spread first.

If you really want to know what viral marketing is, read Unleashing the idea virus - it’s free.

The best blogs have a unique voice. The first thing you need to do when you start a blog is pick your voice. Is it going to be serious, light-hearted, witty, comical? You decide, but decide and stick to it. You’ll be better off for it.

Good Examples: Valleywag and Trizle

By choosing a voice your blog will stand out from the millions of others on the same topic. This isn’t anything new, if you want to have a successful product it needs to reflect a certain personality. There’s no real reason to think that you should be marketing your blog any differently.

I don’t believe that everyone should blog, but if you’re going to, make it worth reading. Have I done the best job of this? I’m not entirely sure, but I think I’m getting there.

Just because something worked for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you. In fact, it probably means that it won’t work.

Think about why “hot” marketing tactics work. They work because they haven’t been seen before. The amount of time it takes to write a book about hot marketing tactics is probably about the amount of time it takes for that tactic to become mainstream and thus just more noise. The more things that are thrown at consumers the less time it will take for good ideas to become noise.

Example: “I can use MySpace to attract thousands of users for my new website.”

If you were the first person to do this congratulations; if you’re going to try it now - forget about it. MySpace has so much spam that I’ll never read anything from anyone trying to send out a message about their business.

Example 2: “I’ll put my site on Digg and get thousands of visitors to my site.”

Not anymore, unless you have enough people to help you kick off the digg. There are so many sites being put on Digg that the majority of sites are viewed as noise, even if they are much better than the stuff that actually makes it on the home page.

What should you do?

1. Come up with the next trend - the toughest option
2. Use timeless tactics not trends - such as interacting with your community of users
3. Use timeless tactics in modern ways - Blogging is trendy, but to me it’s not a trend it’s just a new way to do things you should have already been doing.
4. Stop relying on what other people say. I love to read marketing books, but if that’s all you rely on your already one step behind.
5. Don’t be afraid to fail - some of your ideas won’t work but that’s okay as long as you keep trying.
6. You tell me, add your advice in the comments and I’ll add it to this post

I’ve been playing on the FeedBurner site a bit more as of late and found a very useful feature that lets you put your feed headlines in your email signature. That’s genius. I know of at least one of my readers that will love that. And yeah it’s cool for bloggers, but that’s not how I’m going to use it. You may remember that I recently started publishing all Lopico reviews in RSS - now I have a FeedBurner feed for those reviews, so now I can stick them in my email. It’s something different that will stand out in my emails and help spread the word about Lopico. I’m pretty happy about that.

One problem, it doesn’t work in Gmail (as far as I can tell).

First : Part 1

I came out of the ‘blogging for business’ event with more or less the same view as I had going into it. I suppose it was a good basic introduction to blogging, but didn’t really get into blogging for business if you ask me. Overall I thought it was great to see the interest in blogging coming from the business community, but I still have the fear that too many blogs will miss the point.

Sorry this wasn’t a better post, my views were unswayed.

I’m going to attend a corporate blogging presentation/dinner tonight, and thought that I’d share my ideas about corporate blogging pre-event and then do a recap after the event.

Here’s how I feel about corporate blogging now:

1. Blogging won’t work for most companies.

Most companies that choose to blog will do it incorrectly. Blogging incorrectly for a corporate blog means making your corporate blog little more than another place to dump your press releases. There has to be some value added. I imagine many of the companies that blog will try it (incorrectly) not have any success and then say that blogging is just hype and doesn’t actually work.

2. Corporate blogs will be overly cautious and underly (that can’t be a word) valuable.

The secret to success of blogs is that they start conversations. Too many Corporations seem to fear conversation - they don’t want to just let people say stuff, what if they say something bad? Unfortunately, if you don’t let the conversation take place your blog falls into the ‘just another place to dump press releases’ category and no one will read it. This level of caution leads to only safe topics being addressed and in the end nothing is gained.

3. Listening to other bloggers is more important than what your own blog says

I cannot stress this point enough. Reading a blog by someone within a company is probably going to be borring, dull, safe material. Others will not hold back in what they say about your or your company. These are the posts to embrace. By addessing a blogger on their blog you will 1) make them feel special and 2) find out where your problems are and perhaps how to coreect them.

4. Most companies will miss out on the fact that blogs are supposed to be interactive.

Again, if you don’t let them talk you’re just pushing more content without the value added of customer input.

5. The best corporate blogs will rarely mention the company to which they belong, instead they will offer insight into the industry as a whole.

Companies are supposed to help people aren’t they? Every succesful company can say we help people do X… even if that X is “look good.” So tell people how it is that they can better do X on their own, and when the time comes for them to buy something to help them do X, you can be sure that they will go to the company that has always been there helping them.

Recap: Listen, take risks, and above all provide some type of value.

- J.D. Amer

Great post by Eric Sink on what I’ll call ‘the difference between marketing and being loud.’ The problem with it as I see it, is the problem that Digg may run into. The gist of the post is that if you build a great product for a small group the group will talk, and before long you’ll have more buzz than you know what to do with - that’s pretty much what happened to Digg / Del.icio.us / etc.

The problem with Digg (relating to the post I pointed to yesterday) is that the group has gotten too defensive. It’s nearly impossible to get into the Digg Elite. If I wanted to become a Digg fanatic I don’t know that I could… it would take far too much effort to become one of the Digg elite (a digger that can get a 5 digg story on the homepage). To me Digg is almost a closed network.

Designing for a few is great, but make sure that the community is open to newcomers. Maybe this is part of the reason that Digg expanded beyond tech. Unfortunately, the same going to keep happening with each topic.

It’s an interesting problem and one that I don’t think has a perfect answer yet… Make it easy for newbies, but reward the long time users - someone will figure it out.

J.D. Amer is a guy that dreams bigger and thinks smaller everyday. — I’m going to start adding a signature to every post, here’s why.

Solicit me. I’m looking for something to blog. No I haven’t run out of topics, and I have about 10 draft posts, but who cares? Tell me what’s important to you. This can be as self-interested as you’d like. Anything. (Yes, this is an experiment for a bigger idea, and if it works I’ll go into it more)

Bored? Try these:
Downfall of Digg
The top five mistakes entrepreneurs make when they market

In my last post I was praising yahoo answers as a place to meet potential customers, but what I really want is yabe. Yabe does not exist as far as I know, yabe is ebay backwards. I want to tell companies that I want something and then I want them to rush to tell me how low they’ll go to sell it to me (instead of selling something and seeing how much someone will pay for it). Sure it’s reverse economics, but it is the exact conversation that takes place in a b-to-b world. Not sure if it would work for b-to-c or c-to-c commerce, but it’d be an interesting concept and something I may pursue. No one is more willing to listen to your ads than the person that asks for them, that’s part of why Adwords works so well.

The real reason I want this service is because I need a new web host. My host is too bogged down, and Lopico has been moving too slowly for my taste since I relaunched. I don’t think that I need dedicated hosting yet, and I certainly can’t buy a server, so I’m just looking to move to a more powerful and less crowded shared network. There are hundreds if not thousands of hosting companies that can meet my need, so I want them to fight for my business - which they should.

Maybe I’ve missed it, enlighten me if “yabe” exists.

I’ve been playing with Yahoo! Answers a little lately, and it’s probably the best site I’ve used in a while. I’m a little late on the Yahoo! answers meme, but it’s simple and useful enough (with a large enough group of answerers) that it really is a great resource.

Sure it’s great for people with questions, but it’s even better for people with answers. The main users are people with problems, if you can solve their problems you’ve made a connection, or better yet a sale. The difference between old media and new media is the ability to reach the individual, Y! Answers is perhaps the best forum for that opportunity. You have to know what you’re talking about and you have to really give someone something that they want, but if you can do that you’ve got a better connection than you’d get from any ad.

Better still, and this is where I think Yahoo! will come in, if you see a reoccurring problem without a great answer you’ve just been handed market research for a new business. If 3000 people ask a question, then a better, more apparent, solution needs to be created. I don’t think it will be long before Yahoo creates services based on the most common questions.

The real danger with this is that it will be abused, it will become as spam ridden as a modern chat room. For now, however, it’s mainly just a great place to find anything you can’t find through Y! search or Google, and that’s more than enough.

A large number of College graduates are faced with a common problem right now: which email service should I switch to? Most universities that I know of, don’t allow students to use their .edu account forever. Instead, they ask you to set up a forwarding address within a few months of graduating. This makes sense for them in terms of storage, and it makes sense for the student in terms of no longer appearing to be a college student. Doesn’t this present a great opportunity for an email provider? And since these students are also on Facebook, wouldn’t it make sense to publicize your email solution on Facebook?

From the other side, Facebook has walls and you can leave messages, but having an embedded chat application on the site similar to what gmail offers could give Facebook something that other SNs lack - a live social interaction.

To me it seems obvious for an email provider to work with a compnay that has a large number of users in need of an email solution, but maybe I’m missing something, because I certainly haven’t seen any Gmail or other solicitations when I log in to Facebook.

If you ask someone to reccomend a restaurant or a bar or a mechanic, most likely they won’t waste your time giving you the names of every possible place in your city. Instead they’ll tell you the best, they’ll direct you to where you’re going to have the best experience.

If you asked 100 people for the best place to go, you’ll most likely come out with one clear winner, and that answer will probably be better than the answer given to you by the one person in the first example.

Every city has 100s of businesses that no one would mention, they wouldn’t want to waste your time. That’s how I feel things would work in real life, so that’s how things work on Lopico. Lopico is never going to be a directory of every business in the united states or the world, it’s only going to be a directory of the ones that are worth your time - at least as long as I own it.

Okay this will be the last on Lopico for at least 2 posts; here are a few of the new features of the site.

1. Design - completely redone, all css based, nearly table free (I’d say my design skil;s have improved, but I’m still getting better).
2. Picks - Adding places to your picks is like bookmarking them - I really like this feature, it allows me to keep all of the numbers of places that I call often on one page. Uses a little AJAX for this - see my picks.
3. Directory B - New feature that enables you to create custom categories.
4. Friends - This is sort of a social feature, and the last thing that I added - so it’s not quite perfect yet - this allows you to see reviews of people that you have added as friends.
5. hRev and hCard - Lopico now supports microformats.
6. Instant vote updating - old voting took time, this was first on my list to fix.
7. Now LAMP based - the old format wasn’t really working out, Lopico is now coded in PHP and much more functional and scalable. (I did all of the coding except AJAX code which is openly available).
8. Easier Reviews - old review used a content overlay and there was no direct link to review a business, new system is much easier and also updates automatically.
9. Homepage Experiments - I already blogged my theory on having the registration box on Lopico’s homepage, my other experiment is the “unpopular cities” - hopefully I’ll draw some attention to these cities and people will add more stuff.
10. Accounts - this may hurt more than it helps, but I’ll be able to do much more now that Lopico requires registration.

———–
Things I need to work on:
1. Creating passionate users
2. Photo Handling
3. IE7 problems
4. Social Features
5. Lopromo - local offers via RSS (only avail in Akron right now)
6. Business - I have a self serve ad program that I’m working on that will be done soon (1 ad, 1 day, 1 dollar)
7. SEO - The worst part about taking down my site for so long was that my search traffic plummeted. Luckily I think it’s even better this time around, just need to get back into all of the indexes.
8. PR / Marketing - I need to be much more active, this probably isn’t the proper forum, but there’s a lot more that I can do now that Lopico has a stronger architecture.

Last note - I submitted Lopico to TechCrunch, but doubt it will be reviewed, I know longer fit the TechCrunch niche, and that’s okay with me. If it’s on TechCrunch great, if not I understand TechCrunch is a business and should only put on the stories that are going to be the best for its business.

… no Lopico posting is going to be tough I have a lot more to say.

Too often homepages are built with the current user in mind. You build a homepage that has a place to login but registerring is on a different page. Why? Unless you are Yahoo, Google or Microsoft this doesn’t make sense. Or as Jason Fried said: unless you’re Microsoft there are always more people that aren’t using your product than people that are.

Del.icio.us does this right. There is no login on the del.icio.us homepage, but there is a place to sign up. This is something that most start-ups don’t seem to consider, and it probably hurts them. If the service is so great, the user that has already signed up won’t mind the extra click, or will check ‘remember me’ and won’t have to log in. However, the new user won’t know about your sites greatness and will be less willing to take that extra step.

My guess is that most sites don’t do it this way because that’s not what we’re used to. And the reason we’re not used to it is because the majority of us do use services from Google, yahoo, and MSFT - and for those companies it makes sense to have the login on the homepage, but only for those companies. Can you guess what will be on the new version of Lopico?

Aren’t FAQs just failures? If this question is asked so frequently I must be failing in my communication somehow. If it was immediately clear to the user I wouldn’t need the FAQ. On the old version of Lopico I not only had an FAQ page, but also a page called ‘the five thigns you need to know about Lopico.’ These five things I knew I wasn’t communicating well, but rather than change them I stuck everything in an FAQ page.

One of my goals for the next version of lopico is to eliminate the FAQ. Everything should be clear, you shouldn’t need to go for help (not that the help page was all that popular anyway), if all else fails you’ll be able to fill out a form and email it to me and I promise to answer your questions. I don’t need an FAQ page, what could have been FAQs will be explained outside of the FAQ, I’m concerned only with the unFAQ, the things that only a few don’t understand. If I can communicate clearly and concisely I will not need an FAQ. It’s just an experiment, and I may have to go back on this one, but I don’t think the FAQ is necessary.

Not long ago I was talking to a friend about a possible web start-up that he was thinking of pursuing. I couldn’t get into the project for a couple of reasons, but I did give him some ideas and a list of sites that I felt would be useful to him. The list of sites is geared towards the type of start up that he was/is pursuing, but I thought that I’d post it for all to share.

1. Instant Domain Search (http://www.instantdomainsearch.com): His proposed site name was taken so I sent this link as a way to try to find a new name. This is one tool that I can’t get enough of.
2. TechCrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com): If you’re going to be in an industry you need to stay on top of what’s happening in that industry. TC was an obvious choice.
3. Base Camp (http://www.basecamphq.com): Great free project management software - essential for web developers.
4. del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us): You may not think of del.icio.us as a web start-up must have, but I do. del.icio.us led me to countless resources that helped further the progress of Lopico. Now, I mainly use it to tag great design examples or code examples - I wouldn’t waste the space on my browser favorites, but web bookmarks are perfect for these types of sites.
5. Cool Site of the Day (http://www.coolsiteoftheday.com): A very 1.0 choice in my mainly 2.0 list, but this site can be very helpful. I did CSOTD and it worked very well for me. $27 to get 5000 visitors that want to see your site. I think that’s a pretty good deal. No, it’s not the best deal ever, but it will introduce your site to an audience that may not otherwise have found out about it.
6. Seth’s Blog (http://sethgodin.typepad.com): An essential read for marketing on the web. I also threw in the idea virus e-book.
7. Okdork.com (http://www.okdork.com): This one was driven by the college focus of his proposed site. Noah, the blog’s author, has a lot of good insight into the college market having worked at facebook. Aside from that it’s just a good read for a young person wishing to get into the web business.
8. Techmeme (http://www.techmeme.com): I thought this one might be a little beyond what he was looking for, but like TechCrunch this is a great way to stay on top of what’s happening in the industry - okay the best way, but the scope was probably beyond what he needed (for now).

The only other suggestion that I had for him was a feed reader - which if I had to pick one, I’d go with Rojo.

Let me know what I missed. What sites would you tell someone to visit if they were trying to get into the internet business?

Google launched Google Finance today, and it hasn’t exactly received rave reviews. Personally, I like it. I think that it’s actually good for the consumer. Why? Because more corporations will have to start blogging. Google finance puts blog posts about the company on the company details page. Unfortunately it is fueled by Google Blog Search, which is weak at best, but it does bring attention to some blogs, a fact that companies would be foolish to ignore. Smart companies will likely respond by launching their own blogs so that they themselves can dominate the results (as Google does with its page).

By bringing more corporations in to the blogging realm consumers will be aided. First, consumers will have easier access to important information; second, some corporations will realize that they can send out offers to customers through blogs / rss and will be able to reach the consumers that are anxiously awaiting their message; and third consumers will be given a forum to directly interact with some companies.

The site overall may not be better than any other finance site, but it certainly has a chance to bring more corporations into the world of blogging. Granted, the new blogs will be more like the extremely cheesy Official Google Blog, but it’s better than nothing.

One last note, I find it very interesting that GOOG returns no blog results for Google’s most recent lawsuit, yet it is the first result for YHOO.

I started Lopico because I needed to find a good place to get a haircut in Akron. I’ve used Lopico to find some great places in Akron that I didn’t know about. Other people use Lopico because… well I don’t know why. I know why I want them to use it, even beyond the original goal of finding a me a new barber (which still hasn’t been done). But why do they use it? The other day I had one visitor add 250 different businesses on one visit, why? I can’t tell you why others use it, I’m just glad that they do. I can tell you why I use the web services that I use:

I use Technorati and not Google Blog Search, because Technorati uses tags and gives me more ways to search.

I use Word Press and not Blogger, because Blogger is consider juvenile by many in the tech crowd.

I use Bloglines over every other RSS reader because I found it first, and I don’t want to move all of my feeds.

I use Google IG over My Yahoo because I like the 3 column layout.

I use Google Search over Yahoo Search because I like the way the results look, and because I use Google IG.

I read blogs and not the economist because I can get blog feeds for free.

I use Meebo and not AIM when I’m at work and can’t download AIM.

I use Trillian and not AIM because AIM has a habit of restarting my computer.

I use the Facebook and not MySpace because it looks clean, because it doesn’t look like it could give me a virus at any second, and because my girlfriend uses / lives on it.

I use Feedburner because it gives my readers options.

I use GMail and not LiveMail because the interface is clean.

I use Del.icio.us and not any other bookmarking service, because it has the largest number of users, because of the firefox extension, and because I found it before any others and I don’t want to move my data.

I use AdWords and not Overture because Overture has created too many obstacles.

I use Springdoo but not Springdoo phone because I pay enough for my phone.

I use BitComet and not Azureus because I don’t have to specify ports.

I use Firefox and not IE because it has tabbed browsing and extensions.

I use Firefox and not Flock because it lets me dictate what extensions I want.

I use Firefox and not Opera because I don’t want to worry about whether or not a website is going to work.

I use Pandora and not Last.fm because I’ve heard all of the songs Last.fm will play for me.

…and the list goes on.

So if you use Lopico, why? And if not, why not?

technorati tags: lopico, web2.0, marketing

I just read a quick post by Seth Godin on switching costs, a recent topic of focus for me. The gist of my 1st switching cost post (it’s pretty long) was this: scraping the internet is going to reduce swicthing costs to nearly zero, the brands that survive will be those that either 1. scrape the data or 2. create strong services with walls around data that people need.

Every one under the web 2.0 umbrella is saying “open everything” and “scrape everything,” but, Seths post (in particular the mention of email) reminds us that there are certain things that aren’t appropriate to scrape. This is a public v. private data distinction, and one that every web business (and user) should consider. Do you really want your boss or future employer to see that horrendous MySpace profile?

It seems that users do want some walls, at some times. Users want their data (the data that they are personally attached to and that they will refer to in the future) walled up. Well, at least until they’re ready to jump ship. When it’s time to move to another service the move should be effortless. Most EULA’s (end user license agreements) for sites that host your data clearly specify that the data is yours, you own it. You own the email - so why can’t you pack it up and move effortlessly? Well, there’s a wall - any time you rely on data being in a place online, there is a wall that must be removed before you can move that data. In my first post on disposable data, I mentioned AIM as my best example of this. No one wants to move that data - the fear is that the contacts (the key data) won’t be waiting on the other side. AIM, I feel, is a harder habit to break than email services. With AIM, you can’t even reach your contacts if they’re not using the same service as you. With email you can still reach your contacts, but the data hasn’t moved. So how do we move the data? Does anyone want to forward 2000 email to their new address? These are questions that need to be answered, and questions that hopefully will be answered in the near future.

So, yes, some things have high switching costs, and they’re mainly private in nature. So where does this leave Seth’s site - Squidoo? I became a “fifteen minute fanboy” (someone who signs up and uses a service only moments before writing about it) of Squidoo, and found that Godin’s answer may be lacking.

Analyzing Squidoo in the metrics I laid out in my first Disposable Data post, Squidoo isy pretty open to switching. For those of you that did not read my first post, that analysis looks like this:

1. Can I get this data somewhere else?
2. Will I want to access this data in the future?
3. Can I move this data quickly and easily?

Answering, no, yes, and no, will make your service nondisposable. Applying this analysis to Squidoo:

1. You can get any of the data on squidoo by performing a regular search, Squidoo just gives you a guide. However, even the guides are available in RSS and could potentially be scraped.
2. Lens Masters (the people that create the lenses) probably don’t need to access this data after they’ve published it. The data that they put on the lens represents their thoughts, which they already know.
3. Moving the data is not really too much of an issue for those that don’t want to access it later, they just leave it where it is (still serving its purpose) and move on.

But, this isn’t a perfect analysis for Squidoo, because of the Co-op network. Lens Masters can participate in the Squidoo Co-op which allows them to earn revenue off of their lens. Thus creating an incentive for them to stick with the Squidoo service. The problem with this is the scrapeability problem. If the data from Squidoo can be scraped and presented elsewhere, how well does the Co-op work? It doesn’t. Think of a site like simply hired - this site scrapes other job posting sites to present information from multiple places in one place. If a site came along to scrape information from both Squidoo and a hypothetical competitor, and then displayed the information on its own site, the Co-op won’t work. With a payout level of only $15 it will very easy for Squidoo lens master to pick up and leave. In the web advertising world, you stay with an ad network at least until you’ve hit a payout limit. If that ceiling is only $15, the exit can come much quicker.

But - I’m just a “Fifteen Minute Fanboy,” so what do I know?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the next version of Lopico lately. I’ve mentioned recently that I think that anywhere you can enter data should have a feed in the next few years - Lopico allows you to enter data therefore it will have feeds (more than the feeds currently available). In thinking about this, I began to think about how users will get information in the future, and how to build a brand in a world of scraped information. The problem is this: if all information is available as a feed, what incentive is there to leave the site that’s scraping multiple feeds and giving the data to you? It’s tough to say, but branding helps, reliance helps, and partial feeds help (display part context, you have to go to the site for the rest).

But what good is branding on the web? A strange question for a self-proclaimed marketer to ask, but wasn’t Friendster a brand that people loved (FD: I never used it), and AOL, what about Geocities? The problem seems to be (as much as I hate to say it), that a brand will only get you in the door online, it takes more than that to last, it takes reliance. The one part of AOL that has really survived is the instant messenger. Why? I suggest, that it is becuase people had all of their contacts (data) in one place and relied on that data being their indefinitely. This created a bond between the user and the data, it was something that they couldn’t give up even if they left AOL. Luckily, AOL made this a stand alone and no one ever had to give up their data. Was the loyalty built on the brand, or the data? It seems to me that the answer is the data. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s the fact that every one else used the service, but isn’t that in a sense saying everyone’s data was in the same place, and if we didn’t all move our data none of us would?

So is this how you build a lasting brand online? Get everyone to put their data in one place and rely on it being their forever? Maybe, but I think the key distinction in brands that will last online is the difference between disposable and nondisposable data.

Disposable Data - Disposable Data can be reduced to two parts; 1) Data that is only good once (conversational data), and 2) Data that is easily transferable. Disposable data creates zero switching costs. If you can access the same data from multiple services or if the data loses its meaning the minute it is published there’s nothing holding you back from switching to another service. An example: This blog. I started out in blogger, I then moved to my own domain with hand coded xml, now I use wordpress. Why was it so easy for me to switch? Because, I don’t care that my posts are scattered. I don’t need to go back and access them, I care about what I’m writing right now. It’s conversational, it’s available anywhere, and it’s disposable. I have little if any connection to individual posts, what I enjoy is the ability to create the posts, I have no connection to my data. Example 2: reviews (as much as I hate to say it). Reviews are useful to others not to the reviewer, reviewers already know how they feel. So where is the data connection? Why wouldn’t someone reviewing businesses on Yelp move to Judy’s Book? Sure you may have a bunch of reviews stored on Yelp, but they still serve their purpose, they’re still there for anyone to see. There’s no switching cost, that seems to be why Yelp has added a social networking element, but social networks fail for the same reason. Past conversations instantly loose meaning and users can easily move on.

Scraping services and export services add another element that make transitions even easier. If I can access my data from anywhere I have no switching costs. I can switch from hotmail to Gmail because I can import my contacts effortlessly. The contacts are reachable from whatever email service I choose. I can get reviews from citysearch and yelp by using Google Local. I don’t need to be loyal. But, I cannot access my AIM contacts from Google Talk. My aim contacts are nondisposable data.

Nondisposable Data - AIM is an example, but what else can’t we dispose of? What other data lacks an expiration date? Bookmarks? ListMixer, has created a site based on the disposability of bookmarks - if you don’t visit them they disappear. I have 272 del.icio.us bookmarks, and that’s a small amount on delicious. How many of those are nondisposable? I can only think of a handful that I bookmarked long ago that I still visit - and those I’ve moved into my browser’s bookmarks. I would say that bookmarks are partially nondisposable in that I would have a heart attack if delicious went down (again), but with the amount of places that you can import your delicious bookmarks to ,bookmarking sites are becoming more disposable.

What about Photo Sites? I would say that photos would be nondisposable, but the easier it becomes to move photos from one site to the next, the more disposable the site becomes.

What about Files and Documents? Is a site like Writely (online word processor) or a site like OmniDrive (online file storage) nondisposable? Maybe, at least less disposable than some other sites. The difference seems to be that this is data that you will want to access in the future (for the most part) and as such it becomes less disposable, and the site becomes less disposable. Of course, the easier the files are to transfer the easier it becomes to switch to new services.
The questions to ask are: 1. Can I get this data somewhere else? 2. Will I want to access this data in the future? And 3. Can I move this data quickly and easily? If the answers are yes, yes, and no - your site is nondisposable to your users.

Proof - Look at Google. Every new thing that they come out with seems to be aimed at getting you to move your data to their servers (gmail, google talk, blogger, google pages, google desktop 3, Google Base, the rumored Google Bookmarking service) or scraping other sites (Google Local, Google Personalized, Google Reader). This will create a network in which all of your data is in one place and you will rely on it being there forever. Google is creating a barrier to exit by placing more of your data on their servers. The more you have with Google the harder it is to move the individual pieces (especially if everything works nicely together).

Outlook - So what does this mean for Lopico? I won’t say exactly what my strategy is going to be (partially because it hasn’t been completely formulated). I can tell you this though, their will have to be major changes if Lopico is going to last in the Scraped Web.

**This may be my longest post ever, but once it is up I won’t care about it anymore - I’ll care about the concepts, but the actual post is meaningless to me. This post was partially inspired by Noah Kagan’s posts on Yelp and commenting - read them.

technorati tags: rss, web 2.0, branding

If you’ve read some of my past posts you might think that I don’t like Seth Godin. In fact, he’s actually one of my favorite bloggers/authors (and I prefer his work in that order).  But, I’m going to continue to complain:

1. His post today linking to a recent graduates web resume. First off this is nothing new, I’ve seen it done before.  However, it is a great idea and I can’t blame Seth for pointing out this coming trend… but did you have to link to a site with such a glaring typo?  (I wasn’t the only one to notice this and it has since been changed)
2. Comments. Why can’t Seth turn comments on for his blog?  I would much rather comment than leave a trackback. I read comments, I never check trackbacks.

3. Alexa. Stop citing Alexa like it’s an actual authority.  Granted, I use it when talking to people that don’t know that it’s 99% crap, but Seth shouldn’t be misleading his audience.

Seth’s Blog is my favorite marketing blog, but it could be so much better if he made a few changes.